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Bunnell High art students honor Stratford veterans with new museum mural

Hour - 5/28/2023

May 28—STRATFORD — The once-bare walls behind the Stratford Veterans Museum have come to life in recent weeks thanks to a group of art students at Bunnell High School.

The four seniors, who are all members of the National Art Honor Society, have been hard at work painting a mural depicting the history of Stratford's veterans and the town's longstanding ties to the military.

The scene — which is meant to evoke Stratford's motto, "Offering more from forest to shore" — features a wide range of familiar landmarks and objects, including the veteran's monument at Academy Hill, a Sikorsky Aircraft-built Black Hawk helicopter and the Stratford Point Light.

Joselyn Ciotti, an 18-year-old Bunnell art student, said the image is the result of weeks of collaboration between each of the students who all originally had separate ideas for the mural.

"We kind of just mashed everyone's ideas together and created this," Ciotti said. "We saw how happy it made all the people who work here and that made it all the more important."

Among other contributions, Ciotti painted a woman and a child mourning a fallen soldier at a gravesite. As a daughter of an Air Force veteran, she said she wanted to ensure the mural honored those grieving lost loved ones.

"I think people should remember not just the glory that comes with fighting for our country, but also the pain that people have experienced in the past," Ciottis said. "That is easily forgotten with time."

Bill O'Brien, a museum co-foundeder and Town Council member, said he is grateful for the students' work. He said he hopes the painting will help draw visitors to the still relatively new museum at Boothe Memorial Park, which was founded in 2020.

"It looks so nice," O'Brien said. "I always appreciate good art because I can barely draw a straight line with a ruler."

The painting, which stretches across several square feet on the museum's rear exterior wall, is nearly complete. The students expect to spend at least one more day on the image next week in order to finish the project.

Rose Recupero, one of three Bunnell art teachers who are overseeing the project, said the painting was designed by the students earlier this year after the museum asked community members to submit ideas for a mural.

"We help out a little, but they're doing most of the work," Recupero said.

Recupero said the students have been given special permission to complete the mural during school hours. She noted local students have previously helped beautify locations across town, including a project last summer that involved painting traffic control boxes.

Krystal Antao, who helped paint much of the mural's landscape, said she has enjoyed the opportunity to serve the town while gaining experience outside the classroom.

"It's great to work on a bigger scale," Antao said. "We're used to doing our own individual art. So to work together and collaborate on one piece together has been really interesting."

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